Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

Interestingly I'm not sure I agree with this. At a previous Job my boss (not CEO, but sub-org head) called from the hospital less than an hour before giving birth; showed up at work just days after. Without her, I think, actually intending it, this set up a quite bad precedent, that some people felt like they needed to follow. I think that got resolved after I left, but she'd not realized that other people thought she explicitly did this to set up an example. People feel it's a lot harder to complain about things if leadership lives through it as well, even if that's not comparable.

I've heard similar stories from others since.

how do you know the 'great culture' is for assumedly white dudes (what does that mean even, white dude is not some singular set of human traits)?

I'm female, I've been the first and the only woman on teams. I don't give a crap about it. I do my job and expect my colleagues to do the same.

Any place with crap culture is crap culture for almost everyone, no matter gender-identity or race.

I look for places where the employees are passionate and care about what they're doing. Somewhere where code reviews are neither combative nor do they roll over and let things through. Basically somewhere I'll be working to be better for both me and for my colleagues.

Maybe that's something you could ask about. How are code reviews handled, how are implementation disagreements handled. Ask for stories about the last time something fell over. How do they handle call outs, all those stressful situations that people often like to brag about. How someone brags can tell you if you want to work with them or not.

I'm not suggesting HN is the worst. But it's pretty bad, as are tech communities generally. Because I care about HN I want it to be better.

HN isn't separate from real life, it's part of it. Many people have built their careers through HN. Companies get funded through HN and people launch their startups on HN. This place is real, and if it's not welcoming to women, people of color, or other marginalized groups then that's a problem.

Woman at a ~100 person startup here -

Wanted to comment because there are a lot of posts on here that seem to promote some idea that the company has to really push for women-friendly policies/activities to be a great place for women to work, which I happen to completely disagree with (save for policies that could be classified as human-friendly such as leave and flexible hours).

I work at a mediocre startup (first engineering job, don't judge!) and therefore we have some trouble hiring people. We've got the ping pong and kegs, which I couldn't care less about, and plenty of brogrammers and other bromployees, but day to day those really are irrelevant if you're getting interesting work and have a good manager.

We absolutely have a diversity issue - I'm the only female engineer on a team of about 20, the company as a whole has maybe 1/3 women, it took the company about 6 years before they had their first woman go on maternity leave (many men are fathers, though their paternity leaves were short), and I don't work with anyone who would be considered underrepresented in tech.

Because we have trouble hiring, we've tended to get people who are super green but excellent coworkers, or who are great programmers with mediocre-to-awful people skills. Of the latter, 2 had very clear misogynist tendencies, and both were fired after complaints made by men. One of the two made my life really uncomfortable when I surpassed his skill level, but only for about a week and then he was fired. I didn't even have to complain - my manager saw it and acted immediately.

We don't have a very active diversity group, though we tried to at one point and it fizzled out. But honestly, my boyfriend works at a company with a diversity group and they do the most ridiculous, cringe-worthy activities that really do not make women look very sensible, unfortunately (arts and crafts, etc).

Basically, my company looks like the exact type of place you might want to avoid if you want a female-friendly workplace, but it's been a wonderful place for me to grow as an engineer. It has some major problems, but is really trying to take concrete steps to improve. I'd love to have some female role models and a more diverse group of coworkers, so please don't discount companies like mine for looking like the stereotype!